Esri is launching a new campaign to use their expertise in geographic information system technology to support the country’s agricultural industry and strengthen food resilience in the face of a changing climate.

The campaign is in support of the White House Climate Data Initiative Food Resilience effort, which was unveiled Tuesday by President Barack Obama’s administration.

“We recognize the unique role geography can play in being an ‘integrator’ of information that unlocks understanding,” said Susana Crespo, agriculture specialist at Esri, in an email.

“In creating and sharing a spatially explicit understanding of food production across landscapes, we can make better decisions that lead to more sustainable outcomes.”

The Obama administration in March unveiled the Climate Data Initiative—part of the president’s Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution in the country, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change and lead international efforts to address the challenge globally, according to a White House news release.

The administration Tuesday unveiled the “food resilience” theme of the initiative, which is aimed at empowering the agricultural sector and strengthening the resilience of the global food system in a changing climate.

Data released in May by the National Climate Assessment shows increasing climate disruptions to agriculture that are projected to become more severe over this century, according to the White House news release. Climate change’s effects on agriculture will have consequences for food security, both nationally and globally through changes in crop yields and food prices as well as effects on food processing, storage, transportation and retailing, according to the release.

“Esri’s technology makes it possible to match the right actions to the right place,” Crespo said. “For example, by helping farmers get a more precise understanding of what is happening within a field, farmers can decide where to focus limited resources like water and fertilizer to optimize production while saving money.”

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Esri’s efforts to use geography to better visualize, understand and improve the global food system is organized into three complementary pieces, according to Esri’s website on Resilient Communities: unlocking authoritative data from public and private partners as live data feeds; establishing a collaborative virtual laboratory that enables scientists and policy makers to explore and create spatial data; and hosting an Executive Whiteboard session in the fall centered around food resilience.

“Esri works with partners across the public and private sector who have made great strides in being able to quantify the state of global food production,” Crespo said. “We will work with these organizations to unlock their data as live feeds that can be used in Web maps, applications and analyses that will drive global change.”

Next week, which is National Farmers Market Week, Esri will issue a story map on existing Farmers Market locations.